File:The Naval Battle of Meloria MET DT5974.jpg

This drawing was identified by Mary Newcome Schleier as an early compositional study for a lunette fresco, painted by David in 1783 in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Palazzo Ducale, Genoa . It por trays the naval victory of the Genoese over the Pisans in 1284, in a battle fought off the island of Meloria in the Ligurian Sea. David’s fresco replaced one by Marcantonio Franceschini of the same subject, painted in 17o2—4 (destroyed in the fire of 1777), which had formed part of an ambitious national iconography during the late seventeenth— early eighteenth century phases of the deco ration of the Palazzo Ducale. A hozzetto in oil on canvas by David for the Battle of Meloria (Galleria di Palazzo Reale, Genoa) is closer to the fresco than is the Museum’s drawing. The drawing succeeds better than the fresco, however, in conveying the epic dimension of the battle with Romantic immediacy, and in the stark ly lit foreground disembarking boats plow through broken masts, piles of corpses, and nude fighting soldiers.